A jury at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Castlebar returned a total of 21 guilty verdicts in the case of the 49-year-old accused man.

The jury of seven men and five women will resume their deliberations today on the remaining 62 counts of rape on the indictment.

The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had denied all of the 105 charges initially preferred against him at the start of the trial last week. These were reduced to a total of 83 counts by Mr Justice Barry White by the time the jury began deliberating just before lunchtime yesterday.

During the trial, the man's daughter, who is now 30, told of being buggered by her father from the time she was five or six. She said she had been buggered, indecently assaulted and raped over a 15-year period up to 2000.

The first offence had happened in a press and other sexual assaults had taken place over the bonnet of a car, inside a car and on the ground. She said she had been unable to tell anyone about the abuse and could not get away from her father while she was growing up.

Her first child was born in 2000 and within two weeks, and while she still had stitches inserted following the birth, he had raped her again.

She said she was forced to put a certain name as the father on the birth certs of her two children. But the person named was not the father and neither was her partner, she said.

She had finally summoned up the courage to go to a garda station and told a sergeant about the abuse later in 2000.

A forensic scientist told the court it was 2,500 times more likely that the accused man was the father of her first child, rather than any unrelated male. This amounted to a 99.96pc probability of paternity.

Paternity

The scientist concluded it was 7,700 times more likely he was the father of her second child than any unrelated male. This amounted to a 99.98pc probability of paternity.

After the jury had been deliberating for two hours and 40 minutes, Mr Justice White summoned them at the conclusion of yesterday's sitting. The court registrar asked the foreman if they had reached a verdict in respect of any of the counts.

When the foreman replied "yes", the registrar proceeded to read the guilty verdicts into the court record.

The jury found the accused man guilty of all eight counts of buggering his daughter in 1986, 1987 and 1988; guilty of all eight counts of indecently assaulting his daughter over the same period; and guilty of five counts of raping her in 1999 and 2000.

Mr Justice White told the jury he would give them further directions when they returned to court this morning.